David's Lobster Dinner

 David's high school classmate was Big Bob Cottell. In high school, he was 6'3" and about 130 pounds, but he kept on growing. When he hit 6'6.25", he was too tall for uniforms so was not drafted into the Army. He became a longshoreman and became as strong as he was big. Another friend, Tom Knutsen of a tugboat family wanted to throw a dinner--maybe this was when Dave came home from the Army--and got lobster from a friend who had a business distributing fresh lobster. Sometime the lobsters were too big to use in commerce, weighing five pounds and up. David tried to crack it with a cracker. He couldn't crack it open, so Big Bob picked it up with his big longshoreman hands, and opened it bare-handed.

Big Bob Cottell married Jan Bunell whose family had Brookmade Dairy. When David's father, Gene Sampson, wanted to build a railroad spur to serve the warehouse he used for his beer and wine distribution business in downtown Coos Bay, he couldn't get railroad ties because they were appropriated by the U.S. Government as an essential defense material during WW II. The Bunells had a supply of ties they had cut for the government, but some did not fit the government's specification exactly enough to sell, so they gave the lot to Gene, for free.